Robert Scoble's third corporate blogging tip is: “Make one post contain one idea, or set of links,” which is hard to argue with. But, what's an idea? Looking at one of Dave Winer's posts from today, an idea could be just one sentence, like: “Julie Leung: Why high school never ends.” Or, if you read Shelley Power's “Introducing: Tagback”, you realize an idea could be a whole essay with critique, development of ideas, and introduction of advanced techniques to address it all. So, what's a blog post supposed to be?
I suppose the punt answer is “all of the above”, but I think it's possible to be more concrete. Specifically, I think the brunt of Scoble's advice is to get a simple, easy to communicate version of what you have to say up front. If you're posting style is the Winer sound-bite, that means writing a really good sentence that will get people to click through to the post you're advertising (seemingly Dave's intent with the one-liners). If you're Shelley Powers, you write an engaging first paragraph (or two) that lays out the problem and the solution. If you're me, you make sure to write an abstract of the post.
I call this tadpole writing because you expect your readership to be thick at the head and wane the further and further you get down to the end of the post, i.e., like a tadpole. You want the most readers to get your pivotal message, so you jam it up front. If the idea is good enough, you'll get a link, even if the person does not read the whole post. That way, they'll come back if they want more, and their link will bring others to you.
Well, why not just write short posts? This really depends on your blogging strategy. A lot of bloggers amount to quipsters and short posts suit them. However, longer posts are something people return to again and again (if they are any good) as they attempt to solve a problem related to what you wrote about. If you have a long sales-cycle product like consulting, software development, or other professional service, having these longer posts helps you develop a relationship with potential customers.
Consider Adaptive Path's post on AJAX, a combination of technologies designed to improve user experience on web pages. With that long but clearly written post about the combination of a number of advanced technologies, they established themselves as authorities on the combination and coined a term that everyone is using. People are still linking to their post now, over a month later.
So, I don't advise people to write in a granular style. Write in a clear style with important content that will get your readers coming back for more and referring back to the parts that really grab them. Put your hook in the front so readers will link and help you gain search engine visibility and therefore more new potential sales opportunities.
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